


He starts in Durmstrang

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Starting wars takes time, and words, practice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 13:17:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21410815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Grindelwald and the way he taught the world to hate
Relationships: (background), Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald
Kudos: 25





	He starts in Durmstrang

He starts in Durmstrang. He doesn’t have a plan, not really; he just wants to see how people will react. He’s curious. This is what he learns: if you demand, people refuse. If you take, you have to guard or it will be taken from you. If you shout, you will never be louder than the crowd that shouts back.

This is also what he learns: if you whisper, people strain to listen. If you pretend you don’t want it, people fight to give it to you. If you stand behind them and encourage, people will pull others along in their haste to follow.

It is not so simple as that, of course. Nor is Grindelwald so practiced to have mastered it, not then - his experiments are rudimentary, imperfect. They are not looked on kindly by those who misunderstand him. He leaves with only the barest seeds sown behind him.

From Aberforth, this is what he learns: a man who thinks once that you are false will look for lies in everything you say; if you tell him the sky is blue he will ask why you are keeping the sunset from him.

From Albus, this is what he learns: the half of a man’s heart you do not hold can ruin you; the half of your heart you give him in return is a weapon against which there is no defence.

From Ariana, this is what he learns: _we_ are only as strong as the _they _we face; when _they_ are the enemy we will win but when _we_ are the cause of our suffering then there is only you and I and the broken chasm between.

Grindelwald limps from England in anguish but he consoles himself that he has gathered valuable data from these experiments. He will not make the same mistakes twice. (He leaves half his heart behind and the lack of it makes it easier to keep his distance when he experiments again.)

In the war he slips into comrade and brownshirt and tommy and doctor; he flits between sides like he flits between roles and he whispers, never shouts; waits to be given, never takes; encourages, never demands. He fashions himself as an honest man and drips lies that no one questions; he fashions himself as all that stands against the unrelenting forces of the enemy and sends a whole battalion roaring triumphantly to their death.

By the end of the war it still is not so simple as that, but Grindelwald is practiced enough to have mastered it.

He turns his gaze back to the wizarding world and he slips into colleague and coworker and teacher and friend; he flits between countries like he flits between roles and he makes the laws stricter, the punishments harsher, the current system unwieldy and corrupt. Small things, all of them, and all of them rooted in the same rational:

_if we are found we are dead_

He wears the face of a woman’s best friend and he grumbles over coffee that the world is changing and it’s not for the better. He wears the face of a mother’s son and he tells her earnestly that he worries for her safety. He wears the face of a husband’s husband and says that it isn’t right, no one’s doing anything and everyone knows and still nothing is being done. He says it’s the ministry’s fault. He says it’s the muggles’ fault. He says it hushed and quiet, fearful and clandestine; he says it angry and unable not to and he follows it up with _but you understand, I can talk about it to you because God knows you’re the only sane one here_.

At one point, he says, _if i didn’t know better i’d say our leaders sided with the muggles_

At one point, he says, _if i didn’t know better i’d say no one cared about us_

At one point, he says, _the muggle war took our children and it wasn’t even our war; we won the war for them, we bled and died for them, now we run and hide from them and how is any of this right_

Ministries scramble to keep order and Grindelwald undermines the trust people place in them until the world leaders are the world liars and nothing they say is believed. The voice of reason shouts to be heard and Grindelwald stalks the crowd until reason drowns under the hatred he stirs up. He draws battlelines in the press and across the lunch table and he defines _us_ as wronged and righteous and _them_ as ignorant, stupid, corrupt; he takes every evil his people face and places it, lovingly, at the muggles’ feet and he waits for new leaders to step forwards and try to take control so he knows who he will be taking it from when the time comes -

When the magical world is on the brink of chaos and rebellion, Grindelwald pulls on the seeds he planted in Durmstrang. He is presented to the magical world as a man who wants none of the glory and none of the fame but a man who wants what all of _us_ want and a man who is not afraid to speak the unvarnished truth to make it happen_._

Country by country, the wizarding world gives him command. Those who resist are swallowed by a roaring multitude that tramples people in its haste to follow him. He stands before them and speaks aloud the words he’s whispered into their hearts and in their fanatic applause he knows there is no part of them that isn’t his.

The muggles go to war again and the tired fragments of a peaceful resolution gather themselves again to make it as painless as possible for all those involved. _Please,_ they say, to the soldiers who fought in the first world war and the families of those who died in it. _Please, it’s our world too; please, we can’t just sit by and not help where we can._

Traitors, Grindelwald spits. He aims his _us_ like an extension of himself and denounces the muggle-lovers as allies of _them_ and they are the first to die.

_It’s our world,_ he says to his roaring army. _We won’t just sit by._

He is all that stands between his people and the unrelenting forces of the enemy and there is no weapon that can bring him down. He leads them in triumph and bestows martyrdom on those that fall along the way. He is the saviour that will deliver them from every evil they have ever faced and he is _invincible._

(From Albus, this is what he learns: if you give a man your heart, you give him a weapon against you)

He marches to war.

(the half of a man’s heart he does not hold will ruin him)

In bloodthirsty unison, the wizarding world follows.


End file.
